Bristol City Boss Nigel Pearson Delivers Dose Of Reality Around Tommy Conway Before Leeds United See Why

Bristol City Boss Nigel Pearson Delivers Dose Of Reality Around Tommy Conway Before Leeds United See Why

Bristol City travel to Leeds United on the back of a exhilarating end to their encounter at Rotherham United decided by returning striker Tommy Conway

Nigel Pearson admits Tommy Conway has “arrived” following his injury lay-off as the Bristol City striker’s late brace off the bench won the game for the Robins at Rotherham, but fans clamouring to see him start at Leeds United on Saturday will be left disappointed.

Conway delivered two brilliant finishes in the 81st and 95th minute to secure a 2-1 win at the New York Stadium after Tyler Blackett had briefly equalised. The first was from the corner of the area as the Millers defence backed off, and he shifted the ball onto his right foot before finding the far corner.

 

As the game looked to be drifting towards a draw, he came alive in the penalty area to convert Andy King’s sharp near-post cross, guiding an improvised volley into the net and sending the 404 travelling fans into delirium.

 

It was only his second appearance since August 5 after suffering a hamstring injury in the season opener against Preston North End and with 12 minutes in Yorkshire and a few in injury time last weekend at home to Stoke, City are being careful reintroducing the striker into competitive action.

With the visit to Leeds on the horizon, Conway’s star turn naturally lends himself to playing a starting role at Elland Road but Pearson is trying to keep a lid on all the excitement with a healthy dose of realism.

“He’s on his way to be being back, and certainly he arrived with two great finishes but for people who may be clamouring for him to start, I’m afraid they will be disappointed,” Pearson said. “He’s got to be eased back in with his exposure but that’s clear he’s match fit in terms of his sharpness. Those two goals were absolute quality

play with much authority or rhythm for long periods.

“But we showed qualities that we need, especially when we conceded a disappointing equaliser with a few minutes to go. That’s very disappointing and some people may expect that to have a detrimental effect on the back of Saturday. In a very poor quality game, we’ve got three points so I don’t care.”

 

Those negative adjectives in reference to the quality of the match were apt as neither City or Rotherham delivered much of an advert for the Championship on an evening when the clash was televised on Sky Sports and was up against a Champions League programme.

 

The first half was largely without incident, outside of Kal Naismith’s brilliant intervention to deny Jordan Hugill and Sam Bell being pulled back inside the area, as Rotherham tested the City defence with a series of aerial balls.

 

“We struggled to get our rhythm,” Pearson added. “We just didn’t start with a lot of sparkle, we didn’t pass the ball with much authority and we made a lot of poor decisions. But what the players continued to do was keep having the ball, they didn’t shy away from having it. We continued to work hard but we made quite a lot of mistakes and quite a few poor decisions.

 

“But there were some key moments as well during the first half, where Kal Naismith made a really tremendous interception from a cross when on another day we might be conceding a goal.

“There are still moments, I’m not saying it was totally inept of quality because on nights like this you need your defenders to be up for the battle and it was a difficult game in that regard. It was just a game that lacked quality.”

It was therefore left to Conway to provide that missing ingredient with two fabulous strikes which set the Robins up nicely for Saturday’s trip to Elland Road and went some way to make up for the disappointment of throwing away a 2-0 lead to lose to Stoke.

 

“Well, he’s a good finisher. He enjoys scoring goals as most strikers do. The first goal was just brilliant, the second was very clever, good technique too,” Pearson added.

 

“We needed to go into Saturday’s game with a positive result. I think we would have all been disappointed with a draw, that’s no disrespect to Rotherham, it’s just really in the context of us giving away three points at the weekend. We wanted to try and get seven points out of the three games before the international break and we’ll try and get six now.”